Protective strips fastened to the sides of vacuum cleaners, to prevent damage to furniture in the home by careless bumping with residential sized vacuum cleaners, are old in the art. Such strips or cushioning devices have, in the past, been made of extruded elastomeric tubing, some extruded with projections that can be locked into apertures in the sides of the vacuum cleaner casing.
Tank type vacuum cleaners, rolling on casters or sliding on rails behind a hose-connected suction wand, have in one prior art patent had the cylindrical tank wrapped with a blanket of unspecified material to protect walls, furniture, and the cleaning tank itself from damage due to impact during cleaning.
The necessity to protect office furniture, while high speed janitorial cleanup is performed during nonworking hours in highrise commercial buildings, creates a problem of much greater scope and magnitude.
The sidemounted tubing strips cannot survive the repetitive battering of continuous office cleaning, as can be seen by inspection of conventional vacuum cleaners used for a short period of time in such buildings. Furthermore, the rigid hard top of the cleaner frequently strikes the front lower edge of furniture, when such an edge is a few inches above the floor. This causes unsightly damage to a highly visible part of the furniture.
The construction of modern wall to wall carpeting, fabricated of synthetic wear resistant fiber, also causes wear on the underside of the vacuum cleaner and, if the "bumper strip" is mounted close to the floor, contact with the hard rough fibers of the carpet can cause degradation and wear of the strip.
If covers are made of a combination of padding and an outer canvas sheath, the continuous wear of the canvas results in the formation of filamentary wear products, which can clog the beater brushers and require tedious hand removal of filaments or threads from the brushes.
A protective "bumper cover" for the vacuum cleaner of the present invention, which can prevent damage to conventional office furniture has a top and sides made of a single layer of some tough moldable non-porous plastic material, for example, a polyurethane, which can be molded with a resilient inner core and a tough outer "skin," the inner core yielding in the case of impact with furniture, the outer "skin" resisting cutting and damage to the bumper cover due to such impact.
It must be understood that a large number of such identical cleaners may be in use by a building maintenance organization in a number of buildings. "Bumpable" covers for such "a fleet" of cleaning machines may therefore be molded in a compression molding press. Apertures or means for: inspection of electric motor brushes; access to screws for adjustment of height of cleaner brushes above the carpet surface; ventilation of electric motors; intake and discharge of suction air, and other uses, all may be incorporated within the cover during the molding process.
Means for securing the bumper cover to the vacuum cleaner itself may also be molded integrally with the cover to eliminate the possibility of the cover being accidentally detached from the cleaner during periods of heavy use.